No Winner Among Them :The many faces of Hillary Clinton.

By Jonah Goldberg
January 27, 2006, 8:29 a.m.

Liberals are sizing up Hillary Clinton for the umpteenth time, and they don't like what they see.

To be honest, I never understood what they saw in her in the first place. The amazing thing about Clinton is that she's so unappealing. She isn't a particularly gifted speaker. She's smart, but in a conventional and lawyerly way. She doesn't connect well with audiences. Her idea of improvisation seems to be leaping from the prepared text to prepared note cards...

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Debunking militant feminist orthodoxy

Jan 31, 2006
by David Limbaugh

Kate O’Beirne’s "Women Who Make the World Worse" is one of the boldest books challenging the orthodoxy of political correctness to be released in years. Above all, it documents the real damage inflicted on our culture by radical feminism and the women who lead that destructive movement...

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How to 'Connect the Dots'

By Andrew C. McCarthy
National Review
January 30, 2006

Washington's scandal du jour involves a wartime surveillance program President Bush directed the National Security Agency to carry out after al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001. The idea that there is anything truly scandalous about this program is absurd. But the outcry against it is valuable, highlighting as it does the mistaken assumption that criminal-justice solutions are applicable to national-security challenges...

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ABC Impeaches 'Commander in Chief'

Posted by Greg Sheffield on January 30, 2006 - 14:51.

After posting impressive ratings when the show first debuted, ABC's presidential drama "Commander in Chief" has fallen in the ratings...

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Abortion Activists in U.S. Say They Are Losing the Battle

By Gudrun Schultz

January 30, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – After thirty-three years of abortion-on-demand in the US, abortion activists are saying they can feel their grip on the country starting to slide away...

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Why I don’t take feminists seriously, Part IV

By Mike S. Adams
Jan 30, 2006

After Parts I, II, and III of this series, I have finally started to get a few hate males from feminist readers – letters usually known as “hate mails” when sent by non-feminists. One hate male writer said she couldn’t take me seriously because I am a hunter. That brings me to my next point about feminists.
11. When faced with uncertainty, feminists have less self-control than hunters...

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The Center for Consumer Freedom is pleased to announce our 5th Annual Tarnished Halo Awards

"If an Old Dog Won't Learn New Tricks, Inject It with Lethal Drugs" Award

Given to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for the combined 42 felony animal-cruelty charges brought against two PETA employees...

"Detroit's Poor Should Pay More" Award

Given to Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick for proposing a new tax on fast food...

"Not in My Backyard" Award

Given to environmentalist lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose fight for "green" energy apparently stops as soon as the results might spoil his view...

"First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All The Doctors" Award

Given to Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a California trauma surgeon who advocates the "political assassination" of medical researchers whose search for AIDS and cancer cures requires the use of lab rats...

"Talk Out of One Side, Eat with Other" Award

Given to California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, for spreading needless fears about a food that he eats...

"Lawyers Gorging on Pop Torts" Award

Given to the Public Health Advocacy Institute's Richard Daynard for his defense of greed...

"The Violent-Minded Professor" Award

Given to University of Texas-El Paso philosophy professor Steven Best, the animal-rights evangelist who was banned from entering Great Britain and removed from the chairmanship of his department this year...

"Take with Many Grains of Salt" Award

Given to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) for proposing a new federal bureaucracy in the form of a "Division of Salt Reduction."...

"Bottom Feeders" Award

Given to Chicago Tribune reporters Sam Roe and Michael Hawthorne for whipping up needless fears about mercury in fish with a series of breathless "investigative" articles in December...

"Tax First, Ask Questions Later" Award

Given to Yale's Kelly Brownell for advocating a Twinkie Tax that even he is not sure would work...

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As Expected, Dems Use the F-Word

The Loft - -
Posted By Bobby Eberle On January 27, 2006 at 7:27 am

Remember that so-called “agreement” drafted by the Senate “moderates — the gang of 14 — which brokered a deal in which Republicans would not use the “nuclear option” to break a filibuster in exchange for Democrats agreeing not to filibuster qualified judicial nominees? It appears the Democrats have short-term memory lapse. Despite that fact that Judge Samuel Alito answered more questions than any recent Supreme Court nominee and has a stellar legal background, Democrats such as John Kerry and Ted Kennedy are using the F-Word: filibuster. The big question is how will Senate Republicans respond....

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Junk Science Judo

Self-Defense Against Health Scares & Scams
by Steven J. Milloy

Cell phones and diet soda cause brain cancer. Whole-grain cereals prevent cancer. Anti-bacterial products are creating supergerms. Alcohol reduces the risk of heart disease. These are just a few of the many bogus health scares and scams that bombard us every day.

Health scares and scams can harm the health of you and your loved ones, cost you dearly, and rob you of your peace of mind. But what can you do about it? If you're not a scientist, how can you prevent yourself from becoming a victim?

Junk Science Judo is the answer.

In 12 easy-to-understand lessons, author Steven J. Milloy walks you through the modern phenomenon of "junk science,...

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Tree Ring Circus

Sunday, July 31, 2005
By Steven Milloy

Is it really possible to determine the change in global temperatures over the last 1,000 years by examining tree rings?

We may finally learn the answer, thanks to the efforts of Congressman Joe Barton, R-Texas -- who has had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at him by the global warming lobby in its fierce opposition to his recent inquiry...

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How Strange Can Life Be?

TCS Daily
By Kenneth Silber

Peter D. Ward is a biologist with contrarian tendencies on various questions about extraterrestrial life. His 2000 book, Rare Earth, coauthored with astronomer Donald Brownlee, argued that complex life is probably uncommon in the universe, such that there is little prospect of encountering or even detecting any alien civilizations.
Naturally, this put Ward at odds with scientists involved in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI...

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Why Intelligent Design Is Going to Win

By Douglas Kern

It doesnt matter if you like it or not. It doesnt matter if you think its true or not. Intelligent Design theory is destined to supplant Darwinism as the primary scientific explanation for the origin of human life. ID will be taught in public schools as a matter of course. It will happen in our lifetime. Its happening right now, actually.
Heres why:
1)ID will win because its a religion-friendly, conservative-friendly, red-state kind of theory, and no one will lose money betting on the success of red-state theories in the next fifty to one hundred years.
Ive said it before and Ill say it again: families that reproduce people tend to reproduce ideas, as well...

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Internet Killed the Alien Star

By Douglas Kern 09 Nov 2005

If youre looking for one of those famous, big-eyed alien abductors, try looking on the sides of milk cartons. The UFO cultural moment in America is long since over, having gone out with the Clintons and grunge rock in the 90s. Ironically, the force that killed the UFO fad is the same force that catapulted it to super-stardom: the Internet. And therein hangs a tale about how the Internet can conceal and reveal the truth....

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Denying the Undeniable Design

TCS Daily
By Douglas Kern

“Divine messages etched in cells -- what bosh!” The professor rolled his eyes and drummed his fingers on the table. “It means nothing, nothing at all.”

“Professor,” said the journalist, “with all due respect, I find that difficult to believe. As you know, earlier this week, researchers applied a powerful new sub-electron microscope to human tissue samples for the first time. They found hitherto-undetected sub-atomic particles on each and every examined human cell, from hundreds of donors. And on each cell, the particles seem to spell out a message in English: I, God, am the designer of this cell. Scientists across the globe have independently verified this discovery.”

The scientist shrugged. “I suppose the physics community will find the discovery of the new particles mildly diverting. But I fail to see why those of us in the biological sciences should care.”

“But, professor…this discovery appears to be a message from, well, God!...”

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Georgia Pro-Life Advocates Gather by the Thousands for Zell Miller Speech

Atlanta, GA (LifeNews.com) --

Thousands of pro-life advocates gathered outside the Georgia Capitol this week to mark the 33rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The event included an apology from former U.S. Sen. Zell Miller, who said he was sorry for his tardiness in supporting the pro-life cause. Police estimated the crowd at between 3,500 and 4,500. Miller, a Democrat who backed pro-life President George W. Bush in his re-election bid, called Planned Parenthood and other groups supporting abortion “the death industry.” Demonstrators are supporting a bill, now before the state legislature, which would require an ultrasound or a sonogram before an abortion can take place. The rally eventually wound its way through the streets of downtown Atlanta as demonstrators staged a silent one-mile march.

The curious rise of anti-religious hysteria

Essay23 January 2006
It is the Anglo-American cultural elites' insecurity about their own values that encourages their frenzied attacks on religion.
by Frank Furedi

The verdict of my son's 10-year-old mates was that it was 'not bad', but a little bit 'boring'. Maddie, a sassy nine-year-old, said it was 'okay for young kids' but it was not in the same league as King Kong. In a few years' time, these kids will recall the unexceptional film that was Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and wonder why it attracted so much adult controversy.

The intense and venomous attacks on the Disney-produced Narnia film are truly puzzling. The novelist Phillip Pullman has described CS Lewis' original book as 'one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read'. With the zeal of a veteran cultural crusader Polly Toynbee of the UK Guardian cut straight to the chase: 'Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion.'

What Toynbee seems to find most hateful about religion is that it is able to express a powerful sense of faith.

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A Real Peasants' Revolt ; They're Rioting in China

by Jennifer Chou
01/30/2006, Volume 011, Issue 19

ON THE NIGHT OF DECEMBER 6, 2005, Radio Free Asia (RFA) received a frantic call for help from a resident of Dongzhou village, near the port city of Shanwei, in the prosperous southern Chinese province of Guangdong. The caller told RFA that hundreds of paramilitary police had moved into the area and were firing at thousands of villagers. The villagers had been protesting what they claimed was inadequate compensation for land that local officials had expropriated, and upon which a power plant was being constructed. As the caller screamed into his cell phone, "They are using real bullets on us!" shots could be heard in the background. The incident is referred to by some as "mini-Tiananmen."
According to official Chinese government reports, only three people died in this incident.

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Stuck on 1968

By Arnold Kling :
1968

"Worldviews are more a mental security blanket than a serious effort to understand the world."
-- Bryan Caplan, The Logic of Collective Belief

Most people who were liberals in 1968 still are. Liberals. In 1968.

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Episcopal Priest Pleased Book of Daniel Yanked from the Tube

By Jim Brown
January 27, 2006
(AgapePress) -

An Episcopal priest says he's encouraged by NBC's recent decision to dump the controversial television series The Book of Daniel. He calls it a testament to what can happen when enough Christians speak out against blasphemy and irreverence on TV......
....Steven Kelly, the rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Detroit, says he is grateful so many believers complained about the show.

"Good Christians -- and even Christians here in the Episcopal Church -- were not only outraged by it, but contacted the sponsors and NBC and let them know how they felt about it," the clergyman observes.

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Pro-Life HLI Leader, Priest, also an Exorcist

By Terry Vanderheyden
FRONT ROYAL, VA, January 27, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) –

Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, the President of Human Life International, is also an exorcist, as revealed by Spiritdaily.com.
In a story appearing on the web site today, When the Demons Strike Back: Experience of an Exorcist after an Exorcism, Fr. Euteneuer describes an occasion of spiritual warfare he experienced that he believed resulted from an exorcism he had performed.
“I have been an exorcist for three years, and I know all too well that it always costs something to enter onto the devil’s territory and wrench a soul out of his grip, but I have never experienced a demonic retaliation like the one I am about to recount,” he began.

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New Poll: Teens, Young Adults Support Abstinence, Say It's Effective

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 23, 2006
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) --

A new poll about abstinence finds the practice has strong support from the people who matter most -- teenagers and young adults. They support abstinence and say that it's effective in reducing unplanned pregnancies and lowers AIDS rates.
A new Harris Poll reveals 56 percent of those 18 to 24 and 60 percent of people 25 to 29 think abstinence programs reduce the rates of HIV and AIDS.

SPRINGFIELD, IL, January 25, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A new study published in Sleep, the official journal of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, has found that women who experienced abortion were more likely to be treated for sleep disorders or disturbances compared to women who gave birth.

The researchers, David Reardon of the Springfield, Ill.-based Elliot Institute and Priscilla Coleman of the University of Bowling Green, examined medical records for 56,284 low-income women in California who gave birth or underwent an abortion in the first six months of 1989. Researchers examined data for medical treatment for these women from July 1988 to June 1994 and excluded women who had been treated for sleep disturbances or disorders in the 12 to 18 months prior to abortion or delivery.

Got grit?

A Penn researcher who studies high achievers says it isn't I.Q., grades, or leadership skills that leads to success. It's good, old-fashioned stick-to-itiveness.
By Virginia A. Smith
Inquirer Staff Writer

Young Tom Edison didn't start out a superstar. His early teachers called him "addled."

For decades, laws, governments, even popular will were stacked against the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. No way, people thought, would they ever change the way things were.

And so it was for Sister Mary Scullion, the scrappy nun from Northeast Philly who had a radical idea 30 years ago. In a nation as prosperous as ours, she thought, it was unacceptable to have even one homeless person on the street. Today, the programs she developed are a national model.

Is it all-brains-all-the-time that separates these achievers from the pack? Or is something else at work?

The difference likely is something Angela Lee Duckworth calls "grit," which she defines as "tenaciously pursuing something over the long term."...

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Laughter May Be the Best Medicine

Contributers: AFP

Jan. 20, 2006— It's been said that laughter is the best medicine, but no one has yet to prove it. Now a Japanese scientist is unlocking the secrets of the funny bone, which he believes can cheer up people's genes.

Geneticist Kazuo Murakami has teamed up on the study with an unlikely research partner: stand-up comedians, who he hopes can turn their one-liners into efficient, low-cost medical treatment.

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Not a Bad Time to Take Stock: Thoughts on the decline of the liberal media monopoly and the future of the GOP.

PEGGY NOONAN
Friday, January 20, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

I don't think Democrats understand that the Alito hearings were, for them, not a defeat but an actual disaster. The snarly tone the senators took with a man most Americans could look at and think, "He's like me," and the charges they made--You oppose women and minorities, you only like corporations and not the little guy--went nowhere. Once those charges would have taken flight, would have launched, found their target and knocked down any incoming Republican. Not any more. It's over....

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Women With Bad Abortion Experiences Support Abortion-Death Probe

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 18, 2006
Wichita, KS (LifeNews.com) --

Two women who had nightmarish abortion experiences at the late-term abortion facility of George Tiller have come forward to support a grassroots petition drive for a grand jury hearing in the abortion death of a mentally disabled teenager.
Christin Gilbert died from third-trimester abortion complications last January at Tiller's Women’s Health Care Services in Wichita, Kansas.
The Kansas State Board of Healing Arts conducted an investigation into the death but determined that Tiller followed state law in performing the abortion and was not responsible for Gilbert's death.
Gilbert's family has launched a grassroots petition drive to force the local county government to call a grand jury to investigate further.
The two women, who are unnamed to protect their privacy, told their stories about horrific abortion experiences to Operation Rescue, a pro-life group in Wichita which has been closely monitoring the Gilbert case.
“Janice” describes herself as “pro-choice” but believes women are not told the truth about abortion.
"After some deep soul searching and many sleepless nights up thinking about the care I received there, I agree it's not right," she explained....

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I was wrong about legalizing same-sex marriage

By Debra J. Saunders

When social conservatives argue that legalizing same-sex marriage could lead to legalized polygamy, same-sex marriage advocates either laugh or sneer. It's a scare tactic, they say. It'll never happen.

Last year, however, as Canada legalized same-sex marriage, Prime Minister Paul Martin commissioned a $150,000 study to debunk the polygamy argument. Big mistake: The study confirmed the scare tactic by recommending that Canada repeal its anti-polygamy law.

It also suggested that a legal challenge to Canada's anti-polygamy laws would succeed. "Why criminalize behavior?" asked Martha Bailey, one of the study's three law-professor authors. "We don't criminalize adultery."

Confession time: I am one of those who, for years, has argued that legalizing same-sex marriage would not open the door for polygamy. The limit for marriages would remain two, I argued. Two doesn't mean three or four.

Wrong. In these politically correct times, do-gooders expand definitions until words — or institutions — lose all meaning. Marriage can mean what you want it to mean...

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Hey, Matt Lauer: Next time you wish to inject your opinion, do a better job of covering your behind

Larry Elder

Question: Who called Judge Sam Alito, nominated to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, an "ultra-conservative"?
Was it an attack by the liberal Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.? No. A putdown by liberal Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.? No. The person calling Judge Alito "ultra-conservative"? None other than NBC's Matt Lauer.

Yo, Matt, your liberalism is showing.

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Between Two Worlds

New book based on groundbreaking study definitively reveals: there is no such thing as a "good divorce"
by Elizabeth Marquardt

Over the past few decades, as our nation's divorce rate has skyrocketed (almost one in two first marriages now end in divorce), a divorce "happy talk" industry has sprung up to stress the alleged positive effects of divorce on all involved. But rarely do we hear about the real and lasting negative effects divorce has, especially on the approximately one million children whose parents divorce each year. Now, in Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce, Elizabeth Marquardt draws on the findings of her own pioneering nationwide study of children of divorce to reveal, in shocking detail, how divorce dramatically warps the inner lives of children.

(To learn more about this book, click title above)

The unholy lust of scientists: It may be time to curtail public financing of scientific research

- David S. Oderberg
Sunday, January 15, 2006

In our secular, post-religious society, the figure of the cassock-clad priest has been replaced by that of the white-coated scientist. Dispensing wisdom from the laboratory -- the secular sanctuary -- his every word is awaited breathlessly by a world thirsting for knowledge....

....It may be inviting poison e-mails to say it, but I venture to suggest that contemporary science is now so corrupted by the lust for loot and glory that nothing less than root-and-branch reform can save it. For a start, although I distance myself wholly from his anti-rationalism and methodological anarchy, I share the late philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend's demand for a separation of science and state, or at the very least a radical curtailment of public financial sponsorship of scientific research. How could the millions thrown at scientists be anything other than a veritable inducement to misconduct? When you combine it with the innumerable honors and awards that await the next would-be secular savior of humanity, one wonders that fraud is not even more common than it appears to be.

...(To read complete article click above title)

91,700 abortions in city

BY PAUL H.B. SHIN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

For every 100 babies born in New York City, women had 74 abortions in 2004, according to newly released figures that reaffirm the city as the abortion capital of the country.

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Questions Raised About Homosexual Advocacy on Gov't Website

By Jim Brown
January 18, 2006

(AgapePress) - A conservative columnist and prominent mental health expert is expressing concern over a federal government website that celebrates homosexuality.

The Family Research Council has revealed that an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has numerous pages of "pro-homosexual propaganda posted on one of its websites." A website of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) boasts of "celebrating the pride and diversity among and within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender populations." (Link to website -- Warning: This website contains pro-homosexual material)

Columnist Dr. Warren Throckmorton says the website contain erroneous information, and points out that "one of the so-called 'facts'" on the website quotes a 1989 Department of Health report saying that homosexual youth are up to five times more likely to attempt suicide. "Anyone who knows this literature at all knows that that report ... was speculation," Throckmorton says. "There are no data, there's no research to support that. That's been debunked many, many times."

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Study: Most College Students Lack Skills

By BEN FELLER

WASHINGTON - Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food.
Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.

More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks....

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What emotionally disturbed children taught me about world politics: Part II, what to do?

By Jennifer Roback Morse
Jan 16, 2006

In a recent column, I described Saddam Hussein as an attachment disordered individual. In this week’s column, I analyze what to do with him.

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Copyright © 2006 Townhall.com

What emotionally disturbed children taught me about world politics

By Jennifer Roback Morse
Jan 2, 2006

It was the headline that did it: “Hussein dwells on own predicament, not on testimony.” I’m thinking, I know this guy. He sounds a lot like some of the kids I’ve seen in my years around the foster care system. This guy is a socio-path, most probably with reactive attachment disorder...

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Copyright © 2006 Townhall.com

God, Religion ... Whatever -- Are Our Churchgoing Youth Falling Away from the Faith?

(No time for Doctrine? Think again)
By Ed Vitagliano
January 13, 2006

(AgapePress) - No Christian parent wants to hear the words "apostasy" and "my child" uttered in the same sentence, for the very thought that our children may be falling away from Christianity is -- or should be -- terrifying...

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We should be alarmed that our children are not alarmed'

By GABOR MATÉ
Saturday, January 14, 2006 Posted at 6:41 PM EST
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Many parents would be horrified at the sadism their children favour as entertainment. Ought they to be worried?

In Hostel, the gore flick young audiences have made into North America's top-grossing theatre attraction, human beings perpetrate on one another whatever can be accomplished with knives, hooks, scalpels, tongs, drills, pincers and electrical saws...

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Link found between light, breast cancer

By MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT
Saturday, January 14, 2006 Posted at 2:13 AM EST
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

The high rate of breast cancer in industrialized countries has long puzzled medical researchers, but a team of U.S. scientists has discovered a possible explanation for why women in developed countries are at high risk of developing the disease.

The answer at first glance may seem unlikely: nighttime exposure to electric lighting.
...

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“Enraged and Engaged”

January 13, 2006, 8:39 a.m.
The women of the Left whine again.
By Carrie Lukas

Ever subtle, feminist groups last week launched the “Enraged and Engaged” campaign in anticipation of Senate hearings on Samuel Alito. The National Organization for Women (NOW) and the Feminist Majority pledged to mobilize their grassroots activists to warn the public and the vote-wielding senators about the danger Alito poses to America and American women in particular. The hyperbole is familiar to anyone who’s followed politics during the last decade: Feminist groups regularly proclaim that nominees, candidates or legislation spell doom for women....

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Liberal Former Alito Clerk: Don't "F" Alito

By Susan Sullivan
Jan 12, 2006

Most efforts at evaluating the nomination of Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court have fallen along predictable party lines. By opposing the nomination however, my fellow liberals and I run the real danger of shooting ourselves in our own left foot.

I was one of Judge Alito's law clerks from 1990-1991, the year the Casey decision was decided. I consider myself a social progressive. I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU and a liberal pro-choice advocate who supports abortion rights. I favor gun control, support gay marriage and oppose the death penalty. I also don't have a problem if you want to take "God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance. In short, no one is likely to mistake me for a conservative any time soon. Yet, I support the nomination of Judge Alito, because I know from having worked closely with him, that he is not a political ideologue and is not intent on advancing a conservative political agenda...

(Keep reading! Click title for article)

Feminism isn't dead, but a new book wounds it badly

By Mona Charen
Jan 13, 2006

Some women protest, "I'm a feminist, just not a radical feminist." Kate O'Beirne is impatient with such qualifications. She is not any kind of feminist, and when you finish her sparkling new book "Women Who Make the World Worse," you won't be one either....

...(don't stop now! To continue article, click on title)

Mona Charen is a syndicated columnist and political analyst living in the Washington, D.C., area.
Copyright © 2006 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Sudden Wake-Ups Cause Dangerous Mistakes

Sleep inertia, the grogginess often experienced after a sudden wake-up, can be as damaging to judgment and performance as being drunk!

That's the conclusion of a fascinating new study, which raises serious questions for doctors, truckers, firefighters, pilots, and others who must sometimes work on short notice

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India's 'girl deficit' deepest among educated

Selective-sex abortion claims 500,000 girls a year
from the January 13, 2006 edition
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW DELHI -

Banned by Indian law for more than a decade, the practice of prenatal selection and selective abortion remains a common practice in India, claiming up to half a million female children each year, according to a recent study by the British medical journal, The Lancet....
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Brief statement on TV`s `Book of Daniel

Note: Anticipating calls and concerns from LCMS members on the new TV show, "The Book of Daniel," we asked Dr. Gene Edward Veith, cultural editor of World Magazine and director of the Cranach Institute at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Ind., to offer a comment on the program (see below). Dr. Veith will write an expanded commentary on this subject for the February Reporter.
David L. Strand
Interim Executive Director
LCMS Board for Communication Services

"The Book of Daniel" is a television series from NBC about an Episcopal priest named Daniel and his congregation. Daniel is addicted to pain pills, his daughter sells drugs, one of his sons is gay, and the other is a womanizer. His ecclesiastical supervisor, a female bishop, is having an adulterous affair with his father, who is also a bishop. The pastor's good friend is a Roman Catholic priest with ties to the mafia.

Clearly, Hollywood is making a travesty of the Christian church. And yet the main problem with the series is not the moral failings of the pastor and his family. Christians are simultaneously saints and sinners.

Christians -- and even pastors -- still struggle with sin. Nevertheless, Christ died for those sins and His righteousness makes us holy. The main problem with "The Book of Daniel" is its lack of Christian content. The characters do not struggle with their sins. They have the same values and behavior as non-believers. Their faith makes absolutely no difference in their lives. The pastor preaches a purely secular gospel, counseling couples to have premarital sex and preaching that people should "forgive themselves." Though the pastor does talk to Jesus -- depicted as a laughing, self-help guru who appears to him -- he is nothing like the true Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, the source of life and salvation who is present in His church in His Word and Sacraments.

-- Dr. Gene Edward Veith

Posted Jan. 12, 2006

Outrage of the Week:"Euthanasia Cruise" to the Bahamas"

The lead attorney who helped Michael Schiavo end the life of Terri Schiavo by starvation and dehydration -- George Felos -- will now be teaching his death practice to doctors and attorneys on a five-day cruise to the Bahamas in early January. See the actual cruise advertisement here.

As this article so appropriately puts it, Felos will be teaching doctors and attorneys how to "legally kill the disabled and elderly applying Felos' methods." Read more here....

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Women Tell Poll: Don't Disqualify Samuel Alito if He's Pro-Life on Abortion

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 13, 2006
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) --

A new poll reveals that Americans don't think Judge Samuel Alito should be disqualified from serving on the Supreme Court if he is pro-life on the issue of abortion. This is despite repeated questioning from pro-abortion members of the Senate Judiciary Committee trying to trap the nominee into saying more than he should on the issue.

Conducted by the Public Opinion Strategies polling firm, the survey found 70 percent of women and 71 percent of men said Judge Alito should not be disqualified from serving on the U.S. Supreme Court if he is pro-life on abortion.

In general, respondents indicated that a well-qualified nominee for the Supreme Court should not be disqualified from serving for holding pro-life views. Some 66 percent of women and 71 percent of men agreed.

The Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life women's political group, sponsored the survey and SBA List president Marjorie Dannenfelser said it shows that Americans of all political stripes don't want pro-life nominees disqualified.

“Our poll clearly shows that the majority of Americans, whether they are women or men, pro-life or pro-choice, republican or democrat, are regular church attenders or almost never go, do not believe a Supreme Court nominee should be disqualified if they are pro-life," she explained...(to continue article click title above)

The first day of Biology class in the year 2015

by David Menton, AiG–USA
January 2, 2006

The following article written by David Menton, Ph.D. (cell biology), Associate Professor (retired) of Anatomy at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri (1966-2000), is really a spoof on the current situation regarding the creation/evolution battle in the secular school system. However, at the same time, what Dr. Menton has written could become reality if the secularization of this culture continues. You may smile as you read this article—but be warned: much of what Dr. Menton portrays is only an extension of what is happening right now in this culture. We print this as a wake up call to God’s people concerning the state of the nation and its future.
Welcome to your federally mandated biology class—“The Evolution of You by Way of the Zoo.” I am Miss Lead, I have a B.S. degree in “Evolutionary Indoctrination” and I will be your learning facilitator.

...(to continue article click title above)

Watching Bush Skate Circles Around the Democrats

January 13, 2006
By Froma Harrop

It's always painful watching President Bush skate circles around the Democrats. Believe me, I take no pleasure in the sight.

Bush's figure eights were on display recently when he warned Democrats to tread carefully on the war issue in the midterm-election campaign. Speaking before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he said Americans know the difference between "honest critics" and "defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right."

Reporters sharply asked Bush spokesman Scott McClellan whether the president was stifling dissent. And Rep. John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat, repeated his call for an immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

Stifle dissent? Are you kidding? The more leading Democrats talk the wrong way about Iraq, the better off the Republicans are. Do Democrats think Bush was offering sage advice to help them in the upcoming elections? He was setting bait, to which they immediately rose...

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Human Events Endorses John Shadegg

Posted Jan 13, 2006
Yesterday, HUMAN EVENTS encouraged Rep. John Shadegg (R.-Ariz.) to get into the race for House majority leader. And now that Shadegg is in the race, there is no question he is the conservative candidate for the job.

In the last five years, the Republican Party has drifted from its commitment to limited government. During this time, the two biggest mistakes Republicans in the House made were to approve the No Child Left Behind education law and the Medicare prescription drug entitlement. Both increased federal spending and federal power, reducing the autonomy of states and individuals.

Representatives John Boehner (R.-Ohio) and Roy Blunt (R.-Mo.) voted for both. Shadegg opposed both. That ought to settle the issue.

Making Boehner or Blunt majority leader likely will bring more of the same in the Republican congressional leadership.

By contrast, in a letter to his Republican colleagues announcing his candidacy for leader, Rep. Shadegg said, “The party of Reagan exists not to expand government, but to protect the American people from government’s excess.”

The editors of HUMAN EVENTS say, Bravo! We encourage conservatives to support John Shadegg for House majority leader.
Copyright © 2006 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.

The Plot to Shush Rush and O’Reilly

Brian C. Anderson
Talk radio, cable news, and the blogosphere freed U.S. political discourse. The Left wants to rein it in again.

The rise of alternative media—political talk radio in the eighties, cable news in the nineties, and the blogosphere in the new millennium—has broken the liberal monopoly over news and opinion outlets. The Left understands acutely the implications of this revolution, blaming much of the Democratic Party’s current electoral trouble on the influence of the new media’s vigorous conservative voices. Instead of fighting back with ideas, however, today’s liberals quietly, relentlessly, and illiberally are working to smother this flourishing universe of political discourse under a tangle of campaign-finance and media regulations. Their campaign represents the most sustained attack on free political speech in the United States since the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts. Though Republicans have the most to lose in the short run, all Americans who care about our most fundamental rights and the civic health of our democracy need to understand what’s going on—and resist it.The most imminent danger comes from campaign-finance rules, especially those spawned by the 2002 McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act...

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What women want

COVER STORY: For 33 years many American women have believed that what's legal must be OK—only to have their consciences, moments or decades later, tell them differently | by Lynn Vincent

Hours before Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito's confirmation hearings began Jan. 9 on Capitol Hill, Myra Myers sought a hearing of her own on the steps of the Supreme Court. She carried her message on a dark blue sign that read: "My abortion hurt me."

Mrs. Myers, now 61, was 28 and married when she learned she was pregnant with her sixth child in January 1973. Just weeks after the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe v. Wade, her husband persuaded her to have an abortion and later reassured her, "It was the only thing that could be done."

"I thought that because it was legal it might be OK," Mrs. Myers told WORLD. "And I believed the lie that the child I was carrying was not a baby." Both spouses now say it was the worst decision they ever made.

Mary Lou Greenburg doesn't want to hear it. Ms. Greenburg joined about a dozen counterprotesters at the court on the same day, protesting Mr. Alito's nomination. She told pro-life demonstrators: "It's not a baby till it comes out—that's what birthdays are all about."

The counterprotesters dubbed the first day of Mr. Alito's confirmation hearings "Bloody Monday." Two women wore white gowns with red stains across their stomachs, but they weren't the first to wave the bloody shirt. At a "Women for Alito" event hosted by Concerned Women for America Jan. 5, a small group of women, one wearing a shirt smeared with fake blood, brandished a coat hanger and chanted: "Bush and Alito will outlaw abortion and women will die! Bush and Alito will outlaw abortion and women will die!"

CWA chief counsel Jan LaRue, describing the outburst as "stunning," pointed out that pro-abortion women have opposed every Republican high court nominee since Lewis Powell, President Nixon's 1971 pick. "These folks are really, really desperate."

Desperate—and hunkering down in their foxhole of choice: the Supreme Court. Thirty-three years ago, in a ruling that pivoted on the vote of Justices Powell (ironically) and Blackmun, the court swept away protection for the unborn.

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Study shows kids are safer in SUVs, advocates say

By LISA ZAGAROLI

McClatchy Newspapers
09-JAN-06

WASHINGTON -- Advocates for sport utility vehicles say a government analysis of America's deadliest crashes refutes claims that kids aren't safer in SUVs than smaller passenger cars.

A study of crashes in which at least one person died indicates that children in some cases were half as likely to be killed if they were in an SUV rather than a car, depending on the type of crash.

The report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, published in July and posted on the agency Web site without publicity, looked at all fatal crashes between 1998 and 2002.

"Millions of Americans have the completely wrong impression of SUV safety as it relates to children," said Ron Defore, a spokesman for the Sport Utility Vehicle Owners of America.

...(to continue article click on above title)

Canadian Government Study Suggests Legalizing Polygamy

Friday January 13, 2006
By Terry Vanderheyden

OTTAWA, January 13, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A study conducted for the Canadian federal Justice Department has recommended that Canada ditch its laws banning polygamy.

“Criminalization does not address the harms associated with valid foreign polygamous marriages and plural unions, in particular the harms to women,” the report states, as reported by The Canadian Press, who obtained the research through the Access to Information Act. “The report therefore recommends that this provision be repealed.”

The Liberals commissioned the polygamy study last winter, driven by the fear that opening the door to same-sex “marriage” would also pave the way for legalization of polygamy. The study was paid for by the Justice Department and by Status of Women Canada, and conducted by three law professors from Queen’s University in Kingston.

Lead author of the study, Martha Bailey, argued that keeping polygamy illegal served no useful purpose. “Why criminalize the behaviour?” Bailey said. “We don't criminalize adultery. In light of the fact that we have a fairly permissive society, why are we singling out that particular form of behaviour for criminalization?”

Bailey emphasized that other problems associated with polygamy should be dealt with. “If there are problems such as child abuse, or spousal abuse, there are other criminal provisions or other laws dealing with those problems that certainly should be enforced,” she said.

Leading up to the legalization of same-sex “marriage” by the ruling Liberal government last year, Conservative leader Stephen Harper warned that it could lead to legalization of polygamy. “I believe we have to recognize the traditional definition of marriage in law, otherwise we will continue to be presented with demands that just get more and more radical,” he said. “I don't believe there's any support in the country for the recognition of polygamy in law.”See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

See Canadian Press coverage:
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=16f7d4...

Ted Kennedy's Club Discriminated

When Ted Kennedy tried to chastise Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito for his one-time membership in a group opposed to admitting more women and minorities to Princeton, the pot was calling the kettle black.

Sen. Kennedy still belongs to a social club for Harvard students and alumni that was thrown off campus nearly 20 years ago after refusing to allow female members, an investigation by the Washington Times reveals. According to the membership directory of the Owl Club, Kennedy updated his personal information as recently as September 7.

Ironically, the Owl Club, long reviled at Harvard as "sexist," was evicted from the campus in 1984 for violating federal anti-discrimination laws authored by Kennedy.

"It's a social club. It's like a fraternity."

But according to the Times, Harvard views organizations such as the Owl Club quite differently from fraternities and sororities, which are considered a form of housing and therefore are not coeducational.

Kennedy's hypocritical attack on Alito over his membership in CAP would come as no surprise to readers of the blockbuster new book "Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy" by bestselling author Peter Schweizer.

In his book Schweizer discloses that while Kennedy has fought for the estate tax and spoken out against tax shelters, he has repeatedly benefited from an intricate web of trusts and private foundations that have shielded most of his family's fortune from the IRS.

One Kennedy family trust wasn't even set up in the U.S., but in Fiji.

Schweizer also reveals that while Kennedy has championed the development of alternate energy sources, he opposed a plan to build a wind-power generating facility to provide clean, cheap power to Cape Cod.

The reason: The wind turbines would be positioned off the coast from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis, in one of the family's favorite yachting and sailing areas.

Hillary Wraps Herself in Armor

by Michelle Malkin
Posted Jan 11, 2006

Move over, Joan Rivers. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is vying for the title of undisputed queen of the cosmetic makeover. Having undergone a cultural warrior collagen injection with her recent crusades against violent video games and flag-burning, Hillary has traded in her ratty black pantsuit for a new politicized accessory to enhance her electoral figure:

Body armor.

Last week, a group called Soldiers for the Truth leaked results of an unpublished Pentagon study that reportedly found that as many as 80 percent of a random sample of Marines killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. On Friday, the New York Times seized on the study. Faster than you can say "quagmire," Hillary landed on ABC's "Good Morning America" to lambaste the Bush administration as "incompetent" and its failure to provide more armor "unforgivable."

"We perhaps could have avoided so many of these fatalities with the right body armor," concluded Brig. Gen. Clinton, who immediately dashed off letters to Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee; Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee; and Francis J. Harvey, Secretary of the Army. Smarter-than-thou Clinton is, of course, demanding an investigation (highly recommended by image consultants to boost one's pro-military posturing).

Hillary bashed President Bush and Vice President Cheney for callously letting troops die and said she was "just bewildered as to how this president and this vice president continue to isolate themselves from different points of view."

Well, I am bewildered, too. Bewildered at how such a supposedly brilliant and savvy woman -- who is supposedly in tune with American troops -- can so blithely ignore the grave trade-offs involved in this matter.

You want different points of view? Listen to soldiers from the 101st Airborne...

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“Die In Place”

(Dr. Mike Adams is always thought provoking even while being laugh-out-loud funny; but this time the message resonates deeper, therefore I am including the entire text...too good to miss. Florence)

Earlier this week, I received a note from a reader who recently made a generous contribution in support of my efforts to work with Town Hall to expose the hypocrisy, treachery, and filth that pervades higher education. Recently, I considered cutting back on the time I now put into this effort. That was before I read the following:

Dear Dr. Adams:

Perhaps you have received communications with similar language but, please allow me to explain the meaning of (the subject line of my email) “Die In Place”.

Years ago while in training as a Marine Officer, I first heard the expression “Die In Place”. The phrase was used as a teaching point to understand the concept of “Mission Type Orders”.

This concept directs that simple and concise orders be provided to subordinates without dictating the minutia of how to accomplish the assigned mission. A Marine given “Mission Type Orders” must; 1) assess the situation, 2) identify his tasks, and 3) develop an operational concept designed to accomplish his mission.

Simply put, a Marine given "Die in Place" orders understands the gravity of the situation as follows:

- He occupies the key terrain of his unit positions.
- There may be NO withdrawal or retreat.
- There are NO alternate or supplementary positions.
- There will be NO attachments or reinforcements.
- The position MUST be held.
- Failure to do so will result in the literal destruction of all friendly forces and the ability to successfully conclude the conflict.

In other words, death is preferable to the resulting loss of Marine Corps honor, culture, and prestige if he fails.

I believe you hold this key terrain in the realm of academia. If we fail to correct our educational philosophy and put an end to the continuous and grievous assault on the minds of our nation's youth, we will lose all. As a nation we will likely survive any challenge (military, political, economic), but failure to change the current socialist/anti-American attitude in our academic institutions will ultimately result in our undoing as a nation as we slowly drift away from belief in our individual liberties and freedom. Education is the foundation for the continued success of our nation. We cannot allow it to crumble.

It is apparent to me that you clearly understand the importance of your position and the tasks that must be accomplished to end the assault on academic excellence. You routinely expose the hypocrisy, perfidy, and filth perpetrated at our colleges and universities. I also appreciate and commend your operational concept of an aggressive assault on those you identify. By identifying those responsible for the activities you expose, you allow direct participation in reestablishing academic excellence. I love it.

Few, if any of your peers strike directly at the specific individuals, events, and institutions that are detrimental to our long-standing academic values. Your recent columns indicate you have the attention of your targets and have also energized support for your efforts. I applaud you for this success.

Another lesson from my time in the Marines is that you always “Reinforce success, never failure”. Your recent columns demonstrate success and I am compelled to support your efforts. I recently returned from Iraq where we are provided hazardous duty pay. I have forwarded some of that pay to you for the hazardous duty you perform. I know that by embarking on your current course, you are at risk professionally and personally and I wish you well in your efforts. I will continue to support when I can and I look forward to assisting in stepping on a cockroach or two.

Perhaps I have stated the obvious to you, but what you are doing is that important to our educational system and I as I write the following, it is meant with all due respect and sincerity,

Die in Place.

Mike Adams is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and is a regular columnist for Townhall.com.
Copyright © 2005 Mike S. Adams

Empty Chairs and Empty Suits

by Hugh Hewitt
January 12, 2006 01:50 PM PST

As distinguished jurist after distinguished jurist testified on behalf of Judge Alito, the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee first visibly buckled, their faces' falling, and then simply fled. Perhaps it was Judge Aldisert's resume --a campaign worker for Jack Kennedy in West Virginia, an LBJ appointee supported by Bobby Kennedy when RFK was senator from New York-- that prompted Teddy to flee, or the patient, sincere, steady rumble of a barely concealed outrage from across the long panel of judges at the treatment their obviously deeply respected colleague had received at the hands of the Senate Democrats that routed Schumer, Durbin and even Leahy. But whatever the reason, all that blather about judicial independence and ethics melted away in the rain of approval from Judge Alito's robed colleagues.

The Sisterhood, Defrocked

Kate O'Beirne provides a reality check for anyone who thinks "feminist" means "pro-woman."

BY MELANIE KIRKPATRICK
Thursday, January 12, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

Kate O'Beirne is ill-served by the lurid cover of her new book, which features unflattering caricatures of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Hillary Clinton, Jane Fonda and Sarah Jessica Parker (a k a Carrie Bradshaw of "Sex and the City"). The Ann Coulter-ish title--"Women Who Make the World Worse"--is almost as off-putting. Uh-oh, is this going to be another one of those right-wing rants?

Happily, it is anything but. Mrs. O'Beirne's book is a serious examination of 30-plus years of feminist folly and the conservative counter-approach. And while the National Review columnist and TV commentator is not shy about saying what she thinks, the only rants that appear in her pages here are those she quotes from some well-known feminist icons.

In fact, one of the most striking features of "Women Who Make the World Worse" is its "I can't believe she said that" quality. Mrs. O'Beirne informs her chapters on the family, day care, education, politics, the military and sports with a review of the radical feminist dogma on her subject. Anyone still operating under the delusion that "feminist" is synonymous with "pro-woman" should find this a useful reality check.

Where to begin? There's Robin Morgan, one of the founders of Ms. magazine, saying in 1970 that marriage is "a slavery-like practice" and arguing that "we can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage."....(to continue article click title above)

Senate’s Liberal Lion Defanged

January 12, 2006
By Tom Bevan

Ted Kennedy threw a tantrum yesterday. In the middle of the second day of the Judiciary Committee’s questioning of Judge Samuel Alito, Kennedy demanded the committee go into an executive session to vote on subpoenaing the private papers of William Rusher, a founding member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP), and then threatened to disrupt the committee proceedings by repeating the request over and over until it was recognized.

Chairman Arlen Specter, clearly surprised and annoyed by Kennedy’s antics, put the Senior Senator from Massachusetts in his place:

“Well, Senator Kennedy, I’m not concerned about your threats to have votes again, again and again. And I’m the chairman of this committee and I have heard your request and I will consider it. And I’m not going to have you run this committee and decide when we’re going to go into executive session.

We are in the middle of a round of hearings. This is the first time you have personally called it to my attention, and this is the first time that I have focused on it. And I will consider it in due course.”

The exchange was instructive not only because it showed just how dire things have become for Senate Democrats trying to stop Samuel Alito’s ascension to the nation’s highest court, but also for showing how far the stature of the Senate’s liberal lion has fallen....(To continue article, click on title above)

Abortion Advocates Threaten to Shut Down Pro-Life March in San Francisco

by Maria Vitale Gallagher
LifeNews.com Staff Writer
January 11, 2006
San Francisco, CA (LifeNews.com) -- A group of pro-abortion protesters are planning to try to shut down a West Coast Walk for Life in San Francisco.

The protesters are calling their effort a demonstration to “Defend Women's Reproductive Autonomy, Confront the Right-Wing Invasion, and Shut Down the Walk for Life.”

A group calling itself Anarchist Action plans to meet January 21st in San Francisco and “stop the anti-choice march in its tracks.”

Organizers of the Walk for Life West Coast say they are “fully committed to the right of peaceful protest.” They say they expect a vocal counterdemonstration to their 2006 walk.

In a statement on its website, Walk for Life West Coast states, “Our witness to peace in the face of such vile hostility is our greatest contribution to the pro-life movement.”

Pastor Clenard Childress, a leader of the African-American pro-life movement in the U.S., has said, “In every generation there is a people who rise above complacency and mediocrity and cry against injustices that deny access and privilege to its citizens. Such are those who will march in the streets of San Francisco for the well-being of our most precious citizens, whose rights have continually been denied and their lives destroyed.”

Last year, thousands gathered to celebrate life in San Francisco, which is considered to be a pro-abortion stronghold.

Those who rallied focused on how the pro-life message is more pro-woman and they carried signs saying, "Women Deserve Better Than Abortion."

"Abortion is not the emancipation of women," Sally Winn, the vice president of Feminists for Life, told the large crowd. "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women."

"When they ask us, ‘What about the woman,' we will not say, ‘What about the baby?' We will give them a good answer. We will say, ‘We refuse to choose between women and their children. We will fight for you who deserve better than abortion."

Related web sites:

Walk for Life West Coast - http://www.walkforlifewc.com

Fork Replaces Donkey As Democratic Party Symbol

By: Ann Coulter
January 12, 2006

I'm not sure Sen. John Cornyn was helping with that lengthy presentation attempting to establish the many similarities between Samuel Alito and Sandra Day O'Connor.

It doesn't matter. Liberals are being routed. They can change the lineup, the manager, the coach, but the losing streak never ends. By and large, Republicans aren't even bothering to send in their A team anymore. Alito can start wearing his iPod to the hearings. By the end of the hearings, he'll be addressing the senators as "dude."

For fun, we ought to replace all the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee with "American Idol" contestants (assuming they wouldn't object to serving on a committee that includes a degenerate like Teddy Kennedy). Democrats would still not be able to persuade a single normal American that Sam Alito is "out of the mainstream."

With all their hysteria about Valerie Plame, I had nearly forgotten what the Democratic Party stands for. It's good to be reminded that the sole item on the Democrats' agenda is abortion....(continue article by clicking title)

The Past and Future of Roe v. Wade

By Steve Chapman

Samuel Alito Jr. wrote a memo in 1985 arguing there is no constitutional right to abortion, and pro-choice groups are alarmed by that document. They say it proves he's a right-wing extremist with a "long history of hostility to reproductive freedom," in the words of the National Abortion Federation.

Maybe Alito is secretly plotting to make pregnancy mandatory for all fertile females, as the NAF sugests. But for those of us who are inclined to be charitable, there's another possible explanation for why he said the Constitution doesn't protection abortion rights: because it doesn't.

It's true the Supreme Court has ruled it does, but that only proves the Supreme Court has the final say on the matter. The right to abortion is a wholesale invention of the court. There is no reference to it anywhere in the Constitution, and it can't be reasonably extrapolated from the principles enshrined in our national charter.

In the history of American jurisprudence, the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision stands out for its utter detachment from the actual language of the Constitution. That helps to explain why, 33 years later, it has yet to gain broad acceptance from the public at large.

Or, for that matter, from legal scholars -- even those who favor abortion rights...
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Judging the Judge's Judges

By Debra Saunders

If by some bizarre twist of fate the Senate fails to confirm Judge Samuel Alito's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, I have a suggestion for President Bush's next pick: Ted Kennedy.
After all, if some Democrats can make a federal case out of Alito's membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton -- target on his inclusion of that membership in a resume he submitted 20 years ago and present failure to remember being in the group -- then I'd like to see how they tackle Chappaquiddick.

(For you kids, the Massachusetts senator drove a car into the drink in Chappaquiddick in 1969. Kennedy swam away, passenger Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, drowned. The accident was tragic. Kennedy's behavior afterward, however, was criminal. Rather than rushing to police after the 11:15 p.m. accident so that they could try to rescue Kopechne, Kennedy went back to his hotel. He did not call police until the next morning. Kennedy said he delayed because he panicked and was in shock. Many suspect he spent those hours trying to construct an alibi. After an investigation probably less intense than the Democrats' vetting of Alito's resumes, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident. A judge sentenced Kennedy to two months, suspended.)

I've never understood what senators were thinking in allowing Kennedy on the Judiciary Committee in the first place. While Kennedy seems to consider himself a champion for the little guy, he is a walking tribute to a system that, in its low moments, allows the rich and powerful to get away with crimes that would put others behind bars. He is a discredit to the system.

In 1991, Kennedy had to scrunch down in his seat when his colleagues accused now-Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.

On Wednesday, Kennedy seemed like a crazy man when he suggested that the committee subpoena records relating to Alito and the Princeton alumni club. I know some people who don't buy Alito's "no specific recollection of that organization" answer. For my part, the older I get, the more credible I find it when other people claim lapses of memories.

In the end, this is all about smear. Some Democratic senators, like Dianne Feinstein, are ready to stick to the issues. I respect her questions. Alas, others -- like Kennedy -- dive deep into the sewer to make Alito look bad. They put what he did or said decades ago under a microscope. If they can't make Alito seem racist or sexist, they dig for some association, no matter how negligible, with a racist/sexist group. If Alito says he wasn't aware of how insidious the group was, he's lying -- or, critics intone with knowing cynicism, it's fishy.

For years, I've heard Kennedy fans say that it's a cheap shot to dredge up Chappaquiddick. Forgive and forget about Kopechne, they say-- but not the Concerned Alumni of Princeton.

That's why Bush should nominate Kennedy if Alito doesn't make it. There is no such thing as a cheap shot on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Copyright 2005 Creators Syndicate

More Influential Than Rush Limbaugh...

Posted by Greg Sheffield on January 11, 2006 - 16:30.
Columnist Todd Manzi describes why left-wing media bias is advantageous to liberals in terms of marketing principles, and why new conservative media outlets are ineffective at targeting the masses.

Some people think media bias is not a fact, but merely a debatable opinion. These people are quick to point out that conservatives have venues for their ideas: talk radio, the Internet, Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.

But from a marketing perspective, liberals hold the advantage.

Consider three target audiences: passionate liberals, passionate conservatives and normal people who vote. Those of us who fall in one of the first two groups, battle for market share of the third group. We want our ideas embraced. We want our candidates elected....

The target audience - people who swing elections and influence policy because of their answers to public opinion polls - is reached through the mainstream media. These people spend a few minutes with the newspaper and catch their local news on television.

More powerful than Rush Limbaugh?

Associated Press Writer Deb Riechmann has more influence over public opinion polls than Rush Limbaugh does. Riechmann’s dispatches are printed in tens of millions of newspapers throughout the country and because she covers President Bush, her stories often get television coverage as well.

Liberally biased Riechmann is pawned off as news, but it is understood that conservatively biased Limbaugh is presenting commentary. When Riechmann packaged Cindy Sheehan sympathetically, and covered President Bush harshly, it made an impact with the primary target audience that influences public opinion polls.

Greg Sheffield's blog |

Day Old Donuts

Ben Merkle

Moscow, Idaho is a unique place. We have two major universities crammed into a few miles of country bumpkin farmland. It's an interesting contrast, which highlights some odd quirks that might have elsewhere gone unnoticed. Four-wheel drives and cowboy hats blend in in most farm towns. But it is a little odd to sit in your organic chemistry class next to someone dressed up as Clint Eastwood: boots, hat, duster and all.

But things stand out going the other way as well. Mom's Weekend is notorious. In a big city these women would be ubiquitous. But in Moscow, we don't have enough size to dilute the influx of early forty-something women trying to relive their youth. Hundreds of moms descend on the town looking for action. A sea of siliconed, botoxed, lypo-suctioned, lifted, tucked, injected, tanning bedded, desperate housewives, and all of them, like Gretchen Wilson, are here for the party. My wife came up with the perfect expression to describe them: the day-old-doughnuts.
Perhaps the metaphor needs a little explanation....(click title above to continue article)

Jabez Author Quits Africa

Disappointments prompt early retirement.

by Timothy C. Morgan | posted 01/09/2006 10:15 a.m.

Prayer of Jabez author Bruce Wilkinson, who captured the imagination of Christians by relocating to Africa from his Georgia home in 2002, has quit his ministry focused on defeating HIV/AIDS and retired from active ministry at age 58.

One turning point was the inability of Swaziland's King Mswati III and Wilkinson to agree on a meeting time in New York to discuss Wilkinson's plan to build homes for aids orphans.

A few days after this "perceived snub," Wilkinson told staff at his Dream for Africa organization that he was stepping down and leaving Africa, according to a Wall Street Journal article published shortly before Christmas 2005.....

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Stossel: Are American Kids Stupid?

Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Saturday, Jan. 7, 2006 2:56 p.m. EST

Are kids in the United States being cheated out of a quality education?

In a special report airing this Friday on ABC's "20/20", John Stossel reveals the surprising truth....(click title above to continue article)

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